Mozambique Floods 2013: Response and Recovery Proposal

On 12 January 2013, the Mozambique authorities declared an orange alert due to heavy rains that lasted for more than a week. Until 20 January 2013, moderate to intense rains had already affected 150,000 persons throughout the country and total of 55 people lost their lives. The hardest hit is Gaza Province where 38 people have died and left 140,591 persons displaced. This number may potentially increase according to government sources, as some areas are still isolated and assessments are ongoing. Dwellings and infrastructures including roads and bridges have been severely damaged including an estimated 680 houses inundated. In other provinces, continuous rains have left around 20,000 affected people and damaged infrastructures and agriculture crops (Inhambane, Manica, Sofala, Zambezia). Further, the capital Maputo was seriously affected with 5,225 people displaced in 9 temporary sites.

The Government of Mozambique (GoM) is leading the coordination and continuing mobilizing fully resources at its disposal for response to recent natural disaster events in the country. Nonetheless, resources mobilized so far are not sufficient to meet the needs of the current situation. Therefore, on 30 January 2013 the GoM requested an immediate assistance from national and international humanitarian partners, in accordance with the National Contingency Plan for Rain and Cyclone Season of 2012-2013.

This Response and Recovery Proposal seeks USD 30.5 million to enable the International Community:
United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and the International Organization for Migration to support the GoM in addressing the needs of 150,000 flood-affected in Gaza Province people for the period of six months. In addition, this proposal is based on additional assessments done during the last week of January 2013 and includes an initial early recovery strategy for helping people recover and rebuild their lives. The proposal will be revised within 30 days to more accurately reflect humanitarian needs as the situation evolves.

This proposal has been jointly developed by UN agencies and partners, in response to the call of assistance by the Government of Mozambique (see annexed letter). It is in line with the results and activities of the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for the period 2012-15. The latter document was prepared together with line ministries, approved and discussed by the Council of Ministers and signed by the Government. The UNDAF represents exclusively the entirety of the UN’s activities in Mozambique, including those for humanitarian assistance and early recovery. The relevant humanitarian result of the UNDAF is Output 3.4 “Communities in disaster prone areas effectively benefit from emergency preparedness, humanitarian assistance and early recovery actions.”

Funding of humanitarian and early recovery activities is partially channeled through the “One Fund”.
The “One Fund” is specifically set up to cut transaction costs for donors, government and UN agencies in terms of agreements, reporting and improved accountability and transparency. It is particularly beneficial when several UN agencies are involved in delivering common results. The “One Fund” can be described as one stop shop for donors as only one standard agreement will govern collaboration with all UN agencies and one joint report will be produced instead of several individual reports from each UN entity. For this reason, the existing “One Fund” for Mozambique is the most reliable and efficient mechanism for channeling contributions, which has standing pre-approved contribution agreements and a specific pre-approved component for these activities. This mechanism allows donors to sign only one contribution agreement in preferred areas of support/clusters. The preferred area can be implemented by several UN Agencies and/or its NGO partners. Contributions can also be channeled directly to Government, individual UN agencies or NGO’s and UN System will ensure coordination with the overall efforts of the Humanitarian Team and Government.

The Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) will coordinate and oversee the implementation of planned activities in this proposal through the cluster approach with the support of the Humanitarian Country Team Working Group (UN and NGOs).

The proposal presents the context and the response to date, the humanitarian consequences and needs analysis and the most likely scenario. Brief narrative on the current situation on each sector (WASH, Shelter, Food Security, Health, Protection, Logistics, Early Recovery, Nutrition, Education and Telecommunications, as enshrined in the Humanitarian Country Team) is presented with specific activities and budget. The proposed activities in this plan are for the immediate to medium term in order to restore normal lives of the affected population. The activities preferably are carried out with a gender perspective and human-rights-based approach.

The use of ‘humanitarian phase and ‘recovery phase’ as separate concepts responds to the need of facilitating the presentation of needs and gaps to traditional and non-traditional donors.

“The definition of humanitarian assistance'' agreed in Stockholm in 2003 reaffirmed the distinctive purpose and principles of humanitarian action. The purpose of humanitarian assistance is to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain human dignity”.

“Early Recoveryis defined as recovery which takes place in the humanitarian setting”. Most of early recovery activities should be mainstreamed in the sectors and projects, but they will be coordinated through the Early Recovery Cluster.